[ale] OT: top-posting

[Jeff Lightner]

"customary"

There is no "customary" way to do it - simply someone's opinion they are
trying to assert as "customary".  I'd argue that far more people do top
posting than any other method so you might say top posting was
"customary".

-----Original Message-----
From: ale-bounces at ale.org [mailto:ale-bounces at ale.org] On Behalf Of
George L. Allen
Sent: Wednesday, January 07, 2009 11:52 AM
To: ale at ale.org
Subject: Re: [ale] OT: top-posting


On Wed, Jan 07, 2009 at 11:21:33AM -0500, Derrick Norris wrote:
> The best posting method IMO especially when several people are 
> contributing to a discussion is to embed comments into appropriate
spots 
> in the previous posts.  And of course the worst is when you have a mix

> of top-posters and bottom-posters.

I think bottom-posting is best when you're replying to specifics within
a
message. As Derrick mentioned above - as described by
http://www.caliburn.nl/topposting.html --- "In addition to
bottom-posting,
it is customary to leave out non-relevant parts of the message with
regard
to the reply, and to put the reply directly beneath the quoted relevant
parts."

As I remember, this was the common usage on newsgroups - not to include
the
entire previous message and 'bottom post,' but rather to bottom post to
specific parts, or to 'in-line' post. Then again, newsgroups all nearly
always read with a reader that knows how to thread messages sanely.

Outlook won't thread worth a flip - I much prefer mutt.

Anyway - I think most people now days just hit Reply and type, leaving
the
old message in its entirety rather than summarizing. This may be a
result
of mail-threading being broken on non *nix clients - or usage patterns
developed by Outlook. Either way - when in Outlook - top posting is fine
-
so I don't have to scroll.

When in mutt - either is fine - except if 'bottom-posting' I'd prefer
the
previous message is cut-down to quotes or summarized so I don't have to
scroll through 5 pages of text that I already saw in the last message to
hunt for a reply.

Bottom posting is probably better for discussion - newsgroups or usenet,
while
topposting is quick-and-lazy for two-way conversation.

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